Monday, 1 December 2014

The Shining (1980) review

The shining review (1980)

Heeeere's the review!!!

The story starts off with Jack gaining a new job to be a caretaker
for the Overlook hotel. The manager warns him that hotel might be snowed in
with the potential risk of cabin fever, which caused the previous caretaker
went insane and murdered his wife and two daughters. After hearing that Jack
accepts the job anyway. Back at their home jack's little boy, Danny, has
visions of an elevator opening to revealing blood pouring out and was scared by
it. Few days later both Jack and his family travel to the hotel, where they
explore the facilities and even met the head chief and end up leaving Danny
with him while they look around. The head chief understands that Danny has the
power called the shining and tells him not to go to room 237. Months passed and
family continues to live in the huge hotel and a mysterious ball rolls towards
Danny, which caused him to find out room 237 was open. He enters the room while
in the meantime Jack's wife, Wendy, hears her son scream and sees him standing
in Jack’s work space. She noticed that Danny has a black mark around his neck
and believes Jack was responsible for this and runs off to their room, Jack got
angry and walks off to a bar, there he meets the ghostly bartender and orders a
drink. Wendy runs back to him telling him that Jack saw a lady in room 237 that
did strangled him. Jack redeems himself by cautiously entering room 237 alone. There
he spotted a young women taking a bath. She slowly pulls back the curtain and
gets out where Jack and the naked mysterious women kiss. He takes a glimpse of
the reflection from the mirror that reveals that she is an old corpse she
laughs madly and slowly chases him as he leaves out the room in a panicked
state locking the door. Jack returns to his room where his wife awaits
notifying that nothing was there. Few days later Wendy checks on her husband’s
working area only to find out that all he types is “All work, No play makes
Jack a dull boy” repeatedly. There he appeared behind her and slowly moves
forward talking about how much she is thoughtless towards his feelings and how
much pain she caused for him. She reacted by knocking him out with a bat and
dragging his body to a locked cabernet. Meanwhile the head chief was on holiday
but can pick up the signal that Danny is sending with his shining abilities, he
rushes on the next plane to help. Jack wakes up with the ghost telling him he
has to “correct them” so they broke him free and he hunts for them in the big
huge hotel. The head chief appears with a vehicle only to be killed so that the
family could escape and left behind only to freeze to death.

The closed off location is where this film does brilliantly
as it gives of this feeling that the audience cannot escape from this film. The
characters are simple and easy to understand however thanks to Jack Nickolson’s
naturally creepy face; it already gives off the “I’m the villain in this movie”
even though that the film hasn’t gone to the climax of the scene yet, even with
that issue the film brilliantly showing the slow transformation from calm and
collective to completely insane. Jack is fun to watch throughout the film, more
so when he talks to the bartender. The soundtrack over the scenes was done
beautify and obviously this film’s highest point. Even some points of the film
can give off a feeling of music with ordinary objects that normally follows in
musical films before the characters sing but in this film it is used to give a
queasy feeling. An example of this is where the camera slowly reveals Jack
throwing a tennis ball around the house that gives off a drum beat that sounds
similar to a heartbeat. Another example is Danny riding this tricycle around
the hotel rooms, the wheels on the bike on the hard floor can give off the sound
of fast pasted drums and goes quite when he drives over the carpet, which can
pass off as unnerving danger.

Overall this film deserves 9.6/10.
A fantastic film and worth the title of best horror of all time. The main issue
is the strange ghostly stuff happening in the building seems to be real but it
would have been more effective if it shows that Jack is truly insane by having
anything ghostly in his head, which Interestingly brings up the fact that every
time that the ghost appears there is a mirror in the room somewhere. It’s
interesting to know little details like this about the structure of the
building however the film seems to treat the audience with dignity by allowing
them figure it out themselves. The mirror is a key item in this movie without
being address as such by using it to spell “Murder” backwards from “Red rum” that
Danny draws on the door and to show another side of Jack as they reveal the
ghosts to him, where he can interact with them (whenever Jack talks to the ghosts there is always a mirror in the room) and it is also a nice change to have the main female character to not be a an attractive model, it makes the experience more real and therefore effective. The acting is fun and
entertaining to watch and the soundtrack is its strongest point.

“The Overlook,
sacrilegiously built on an ancient Indian burial ground (a minor point for
Kubrick and stolen by Poltergeist), is haunted by evil spirits. When Jack
enters the sprawling ballroom, he is entering into the building's dark heart
(possibly even Hell itself): "Your credits fine Mr Torrance." It's
unclear whether it is Torrance's growing insanity that invites this or The
Overlook itself taking possession of his soul. Grady, the previous caretaker, a
man driven to slaughter his family (the source of Danny's disturbing second
sight of the blue-dressed sisters) is another of Torrance's visitation states —
"You have always been the caretaker," Grady suggests menacingly. The
evil may have always been there in Jack, the
Overlook merely awakened it.” - Ian Nathan (Empire magazine) “Kubrick
is after a cool, sunlit vision of hell, born in the bosom of the nuclear
family, but his imagery--with its compulsive symmetry and brightness--is too
banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls
suspense.”- Dave Kehr (Chicago reader)

2 comments:

Ok, so you have few quotes now... what you want to do is integrate them into the main body of the writing. So for example, when you talk about the use of sound, find a quote that supports this discussion and insert it there. You introduce the quote via the author usually, and then analyse why it is useful. For example,

'As John Smith states in his review,'blah blah blah,' and from this it could be said that...'

You are still writing far too much of a description of the actual goings-on of the film; a really brief synopsis is all that is required.

Please check the referencing guide to see how you use the Harvard method for referencing in the text and creating a bibliography. Being able to reference correctly is one of the assessable components of your essay, so it's really important that you get it right! http://community.ucreative.ac.uk/Harvard-Referencing